


words like water into dry earth

by betony



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Spoilers for Book 6: Return of the Thief (Queen's Thief), stories and storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28204494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: “Shall I tell you a story while you wait?” Phresine asked, her mouth full of pins.Attolia did not quite laugh. “I imagine you will whether I ask or not.”
Relationships: Phresine & Attolia | Irene
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	words like water into dry earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadameHardy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameHardy/gifts).



> _"Oh, indeed," said the king [...]. "Phresine, source of all the edifying stories I have somehow never heard before!"_  
>  \- Return of the Thief, HarperCollins, pg. 448.

_In days gone by, the goddess Alyta loved the plains of Attolia best. So it is said. True, she took her lovers from Eddis and Sounis as well: both dimpled goat-girls and prosperous merchants knew her caress. But it was Attolia and its brash, bleak honor she returned to, time and again; too well it craved her tenderness, and Alyta never found so much pleasure as when she answered another’s need._

_All things come to an end, however, and the Attolians turned their faces from the gods. Alyta retreated to the mountains, where crag-faced Cello made his home, but did not forget her children. Once a decade or so, a flicker of heartfelt prayer reached her, between the hum of droning incantations that swirled up like incense from the temples and the laughing childhood dares that challenged the reckless to invoke the long-forgotten. Then, she always listened; but never so well as when it came from one of her own._

_This latest was no different: all heart-shaped face and dark hair, eyes alight and earnest. By rights she was barely out of maidenhood, but her need was desperate and her heart a desert._

_Even so far away, Alyta knew this, and pitied her._

_“Let me be queen,” the girl muttered. “Only let me be queen, and I’ll want for nothing. Ask any price in return, but answer my plea.”_

_She was Alyta’s own child, descended from a distant line, and the goddess, ever merciful, had listened. So she smiled and sparkled at the next banquet, and had her heart’s desire. So the penitent came to wear the crown, and the last faint prayers from beyond the Attolian borders ceased._

“Which only goes to show,” remarked old Phresine from her place by the fire, “that even the gods might make mistakes.”

The queen’s chambers grew silent; the attendants pinning up Attolia’s hair stilled. If there was one thing their bloodthirsty mistress would not— could not —brook, it was insubordination, however faint. But Attolia, it seemed, was in a generous mood; or perhaps it was only that the prisoners from Sounis waiting in the dungeons had too great a hold on her attention. 

“Indeed they may,” she replied, lips pressed together. “But not often, and not tonight.”

The fire crackled. No reply came from the chair beside.

* * *

Phresine first met the princess Irene at the first of many royal funerals. With time Irene would find they became almost commonplace; but this time, it had all been raw and awful. This time it was her mother they buried.

For once she found it a relief to be ignored. Easy—it was easy to wrench free of her nurse’s grasp, and easier still to steal into the gardens. The gardens were safe; the gardens were silent enough that she might attempt to collect her thoughts, and her composure. Even the Shadow Princess—though she hadn’t even earned that nickname, not then—would be laughed at if she returned to the feast with red eyes and a streaming nose, and besides, Irene had no desire to face her father’s celebrating concubines. Better to wait, better to hide, better to be alone.

“Are you?” The voice was not young, and her accent betrayed an origin from the uncultured north. More importantly, it was not known to her. 

“What?” Irene asked, too startled to shy away.

“Are you the princess Irene?” said the woman who stood before her, very patiently. Like her voice, she was not young, but her silver-bright hair was not displeasing. She must plainly have said that same sentence only instants before, but she had the manner of doing so without making Irene feel a fool. Her eyes were well-creased with laughter, but it made Irene want to join rather than flush with humiliation. 

“Yes,” she said, and then, abruptly: “And you? Who are you?”

The woman chuckled. “Only Phresine, my lady. Youngest daughter of a mountain-lord, far from home and come to pay my respects to the queen-that-was. I assure you I am no one of any importance.”

Irene, daring greatly, said, “That’s all right. Neither am I.”

Phresine did not smile, as Irene imagined she might have. Nor did she seem angry, or frightened, or even scornful. Instead: “Not yet,” she said, voice mild, and bowed in what Irene only vaguely recognized as the obeisance due a daughter of the royal house. Impossible that it might be meant for her, when it had never before been. But there was no one else in the gardens, and Phresine’s eyes were sincere and solemn.

A crack of laughter came from the hall within, echoed by a rumble of thunder. Irene flinched but knew better than to move until, very kindly, Phresine said: “You’d best return within, Your Highness. It looks to rain.”

Irene, recognizing an escape when one was offered, fled.

They did not speak further, the princess Irene and the lady Phresine who kept her own counsel in the corners of the court, for years together; but when the Queen of Attolia took the throne, Phresine was the first of those she asked to attend upon her.

* * *

“Shall I tell you a story while you wait?” Phresine asked, mouth full of pins. When the disaster of the queen’s too-long hem had been discovered, all her other attendants had found excuses to be needed elsewhere. All but Phresine, who bade her mistress stand upon a stool and bent to her work.

Attolia did not quite laugh.”I imagine you will whether I ask or not,” she said dryly, and it was Phresine’s turn to let out an amused huff. 

“Did you know,” she began, threading her needle as she spoke, “how the goddess of the gentle rain came to make up her mind to take a husband?”

The queen, who had been unsettled and undecided all afternoon, grew very still. 

“It was not easy to accomplish,” said Phresine, “even for any goddess, and Alyta was kin to the capricious winds. Something of their uncertainty had passed to her, though she hid it behind her kindness. Now, though, it grew too late: her suitors besieged her halls, and demanded she choose one of their number. So she asked the rivers for advice, but they only laughed at her; and she asked the fires deep beneath the earth for help, but they snapped, impatient, in return. She asked her sisters, but half of them urged one way and half the other; she asked her father, and he hid his face for shame. And Alyta knew there would come none to save her but herself.

“So she drew up her loom, as the Fates had taught her so long ago, and strung it below the sun. She swore to her suitors that she would not announce her choice, until it was complete to lie upon her bridal bed. Dawn to dusk, she worked before their waiting eyes and yet never grew any closer to completion. For by nightfall, when her admirers dozed, she stole back and unpicked row after row before they rose. Day by day, she contrived so until weeks stretched into years.”

“Until Death, eventually, claimed the inconvenient swains and set Alyta free,” Attolia finished. “An adroit solution. I commend her.”

Phresine, though, shook her head. “Until the morning came,” she said, “that Alyta found she herself had tired of the indecision, when it wearied her to prevaricate further. A terrible burden it might be to determine what was to be, but worse still to wonder what might be.”

“I think the Mede ambassador might appreciate this story better than I,” remarked the queen, unsmiling. “Perhaps you might tell it to him instead.”

“It wasn’t him it was meant for,” said Phresine, knotting the last of her errant threads together, “and besides we’ve not yet reached the end. Alyta sent her suitors packing, every last one of them, and never married until she met a man who would ask rather than demand. There we are,” she said with some satisfaction, taking a step back to admire her handiwork. “All ready for dinner, Your Majesty.”

The queen of Attolia descended, draped in silk the color of sage leaves, her face set. “Tell the guards,” she instructed, “that I’ve determined what is to become of our captive Thief. And Lord Nahuseresh that he might attend me if he pleases. And Phresine--” 

“Yes, my lady?”

“Thank you.”

Phresine bent her gray head. “Always, my lady.”

* * *

As the Thief of Eddis sacrificed to his gods and searched for answers, as the queen of Attolia exchanged throne for temple and back again as she waited, Phresine held vigil beside her mistress. She was the first to walk behind the queen; she was the last of the retinue to be dismissed. 

“The gods have a habit of looking after their own,” she said as she turned to go. “You have nothing to fear.”

But Attolia, sad and silent, looked towards the distant temple of Hephestia and dared not agree.

* * *

It is the custom in Attolia that a bride’s first wedding-gifts should come from her mother’s house--but the queen had no relatives living, on either side, and would not welcome any remembrance from them besides. Another custom, then, she would flout as she wed her goatfoot; but the night before her second wedding, Phresine entered the queen’s chambers, a silk-wrapped parcel in her hands.

“If that comes from Eugenides,” said the queen, alarmed, “better he return it before my barons interrupt my vows demanding the return of their contraband.”

But Phresine only shook her head, her dark eyes dancing. “A gift,” she said, “from the temple of Alyta, and meant for their queen. In celebration and thanksgiving both.”

The silk yielded easily enough, and a shawl slithered out: pearl-gray, thick and unyielding as any storm-cloud, and embroidered all about with swirls of silver thread. Attolia drew in a breath.

“My,” said Phresine, running a practiced finger over the wool. “How the quality of their work has decreased over the years.”

But Irene, accustomed over the years to velvet and jewels, studied the craftsmanship with wonder. Had her mother had such a piece, or one of the nurses who’d raised her? In her earliest memories she recalled reaching desperately after just such a shawl as it drizzled outside the windows of her nursery. She had very nearly forgotten. “Practical,” she said, “come winter. Place it where the city’s tributes are meant to rest, Phresine; let it be first among them in the morning.”

“Just so,” Phresine agreed.

* * *

“How did you know my mother, Phresine?” asked Irene. It was well after midnight, and not a question about which she had often wondered, but words escaped her too easily these days. An unfortunate consequence, she thought wryly, of happiness and love. 

“Your mother.” Phresine moved to put out the lamps, first beside the bed, then alongside the far walls of the chamber. “I knew your mother long before you were born, when she was barely out of maidenhood.”

“I thought as much,” Irene replied drowsily. “You look like her. Not entirely, but--something about the eyes. I remember her eyes.”

A smile flickered across Phresine’s face. “When your mother was young, I did her a kindness,” she said, “or what I thought was a kindness. My family disagreed, and once I came to see the truth of it, there was little I could do to make amends but what I do now.”

It might have been kind to say there was no need, that the late queen would have long forgiven and forgotten. Irene, who knew how petty her mother could have been over even imagined slights, found no purpose in lying. She settled instead on her side and closed her eyes.

“I am glad,” she said, for the first time she could remember, “that you are here.”

Lips brushed her brow, but of course Phresine was too far away across the room. Gen, then, perhaps; returned early from a conference with the Braeling ambassador. She smiled, and gave herself up to sleep. Her dreams would be mild and pleasant, and when she woke, she would remember nothing.

“As am I,” said Phresine. “My Queen.”

**Author's Note:**

> For everyone thinking the theory proposed here is utterly mad, I offer the following arguments: (1) As much as I love "Alyta's Missing Earrings," the internal chronology makes no sense in terms of Phresine, who hails from the remote north, knowing about what is implied to be a fairly recent event concerning the Eddisian gods, unless perhaps she had a more personal reason to; (2) notwithstanding Phresine's unflappable nature and seeming omniscience, (and certainly a goddess-in-disguise might be able to fake being drugged with lethium if the situation called for it) the story she tells Gen in KoA explicitly features a goddess in disguise as an old woman; (3) in the Divine Dance Party Ending, while all the other gods who cameoed in the series make an appearance, with the exception of Hephestia, Alyta is nowhere to be found, although the goddess with wind-blown skirts is presumably her sister Periphys. Phresine, however, is explicitly mentioned to be present and dancing. (4) honestly, I just love the idea of poor lonely Irene having had a hands-on divine protector all along to equal Gen's.
> 
> Dear MadameHardy, thank you for a lovely prompt that got me thinking about a character I already adored. I hope you enjoy this!


End file.
